


Tumblr Collection

by MarvelousMenagerie (HiddenOne)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 14:47:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16855972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenOne/pseuds/MarvelousMenagerie
Summary: Collection of a few winteriron drabbles from tumblr.1. prompt 'bullet' - the Winter Soldier is hit by friendly fire2. inspiration from beir's art3. where Tony is Bucky's guardian angel





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One word prompt : bullet.   
> Rated T for general violence & injury discussion.

“Ouch, this is nasty,” Tony lets slip out as he stares as the image. JARVIS has highlighted all the fragments in the Winter Soldier’s arm in a neon yellow that makes Tony sick. Too many pieces, too much ricochet, too much damage - and all of it from a single friendly fire bullet.

“Can you fix it?” the Winter Soldier asks.

Tony waves the scans out of his face so he can see the man behind it. Maybe Steve is finally right, and there’s more James Barnes than Winter Soldier in there now. Or at least enough James Barnes to not return the friendly fire with lethal force, and enough to come to Tony when the ricochet screwed up his arm. Not enough of Barnes to head to his best friend Steve a few floors above though, Tony notes - or maybe that proves that there’s too much of Barnes now? More than SHIELD expected, either way, and Tony decides to like Barnes simply for proving the shrinks wrong.

“I can get the bullet fragments out of the arm,” Tony confirms. He brings back the scan of Barnes’ shoulder and points to the fragments that JARVIS has highlighted in green. “Removing these and replacing a couple of wires will restore motion. But if someone doesn’t get the fragments that are buried in the fleshy part of your body,” JARVIS keeps those a pulsing yellow, “your body will heal around them, but there’s no telling where they’ll end up in the future.”

Leaving shrapnel in Barnes’ shoulder isn’t going to kill him - nothing like-needing an electromagnet to keep them from shredding important organs - but Tony’s chest tightens as the thought of leaving metal fragments in there. Even if harmless, a friendly fire bullet isn’t something to be proud to carry around and certainly not one from a newly minted law enforcement officer who didn’t know that the Avengers were already monitoring their Winter Soldier tail.

No doubt Steve is moping in his room or beating up punching bags in the gym, thinking Barnes will never come back now that he’s been shot by their side. N one expected Barnes to come even closer by breaking into Tony’s workshop and demanding recompense by way of fixing the arm.

After fixing the metal arm, with the serum Barnes might not notice if the fragments embed somewhere painful in his body. Healing factor and all that jazz, Tony thinks as he rubs his chest just under the arc reactor. He catches Barnes watching and drops the hand.

“Fix the arm first,” is all Barnes says, holding it out steady.

“J, give me an updated low-level scan of the arm every ten seconds or so,” Tony orders as he drags another stool over to Barnes. “U, push that table over here and don’t kill anyone while you’re doing it. DUM-E you stay to the far end over there. No, over  _there,_ because our guest does not want to see your fire safety skills today.” Tony finally turns back to Barnes, his dark eyes watching his every move. “Alright, here we go. If there’s a problem or any spike in pain more than what you’re already feeling - given the whole bullet inside you thing - feel free to say something instead of punching me.”

“I can handle pain.”

“Not what I said, but good. This isn’t going to be fast, and it’s not a complete fix unless we get those pieces in your shoulder too.”

“Arm first,” Barnes orders.

“The man wants what he wants,” Tony accepts as he bends to his task.

 

As soon as Tony closes up the arm, finished, Barnes darts away. Tony still has tools in his hands, arms still raised at the level of operation, but now with empty air in front of him. So that’s a ‘no’ on removing the fragments that caused the bleeding and the pain, Tony figures. He turns to the pile of metal fragments he did pull out and sees the clear space on the bench next to it.

“A magnet would help you too,” Tony calls out before Barnes disappears completely. “Cabinet on that wall, third shelf on the right.”

Tony turns around to put his tools away in case Barnes decides to be shy about stealing.

 

A week later, James Barnes knocks on the front door of Avengers Tower to return the tweezers and the magnet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by beir's lovely art : https://beir.tumblr.com/post/171805661363/mornin

“That’s definitely for me, right?” Tony says, eyes on the coffee mug.

“It’s definitely not,” Bucky replies with a grin as he angles the coffee cup away. “This is all for me.”

“It has my face on it. That makes it mine,” Tony whines as he reaches for it anyway.

Bucky holds out the mug, easily out of Tony’s reach as he blocks Tony with his body.

Tony huffs. “Don’t be a tease. Steve already gave away your secret: caffeine doesn’t affect supersoldiers.” Then Tony pouts, but when Bucky doesn’t give in he goes back to his data. He pretends he doesn’t want the coffee anymore, that he doesn’t even see it.

Bucky isn’t quite ready to lose Tony’s attention just yet, though. He steps closer. “What did you say? I got distracted by your beard. You missed a spot this morning,” he teases.

“I did  _not_ ,” Tony defends, affronted, but his eyes are still on his hologram.

Bucky grins. “You did. Right here,” he says, running the back of his fingers along the line of Tony’s jaw.

“I’m not that gullible. I have JARVIS warn me,” Tony admits, but the touch has him looking up at Bucky with warm amusement.

“Uh huh. Might need a second opinion,” Bucky says, leaning closer. He keeps touching Tony though, liking that he’s allowed, that Tony hasn’t stepped away.

“You are a menace,” Tony declares with a smile.

Bucky hums in agreement, trading smiles with Tony. Maybe one morning he’ll be allowed to see what Tony looks like before he shaves. Maybe one morning he’ll be allowed to reach over and kiss the defined line of Tony’s beard. Maybe one morning he’ll be allowed to do nothing but trace the lines of Tony’s face and learn the definitions.

But that’s not this morning, not  _yet_. So Bucky brings his Iron Man mug to lips and takes a loud obnoxious slurp of coffee right in Tony’s face.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of a written out headcanon than a legit fic - and no, the fic won't get written, at least not by me!

Bucky’s going through something of a mid-life crisis. He has an okay job, he has an okay place, mosty he hangs out with Steve and occasionally he scores a date that’s not boring. Everything is fine, but really - this is it? This is his life?

“What are you expecting? What more do you want?” Steve asks, laughing.

“I don’t know. I just thought… stop laughing, punk, I’m serious!”

It isn’t that Bucky is unhappy. He gives it some thought, and yeah - he’s happy, mostly. He just… thought there was something more, is all.

Tony, Bucky’s guardian angel, is  _offended_. He turns corporeal, for the first time, just to yell at Bucky about how ungrateful Bucky is being.

“I work my ass off to make sure you have a calm life! Do you know how many times you could’ve died? You almost got hit by a bus last week because you weren’t paying attention, but thank God I was, you know. And do I get any thanks for making sure that Cassie found someone else to date before she dragged you through the mud and back because you just wanted someone with a nice ass? No, I don’t any gratitude. Not even after I saved your balls from freezing off when you were fourteen and stupid for going through with that dare. I’m still planning on getting your buddy Rogers back for that one, so he better look out…”

“Who the fuck are you??” Bucky ends up screaming.

Anyway, so Tony is Bucky’s disgruntled and underappreciated guardian angel. Bucky moping about how boring his life is: not appreciated.

But now that Tony has started talking, he can’t really stop. He doesn’t always turn visible, and it takes Bucky a long time to get used to Tony’s voice in his ear whispering comments at highly inopportune moments. Tony does turn visible sometimes, though, which helps prove to Steve that Bucky isn’t going completely crazy but was still one of the weirdest and freakiest conversations Bucky has ever had.

Steve has a guardian angel too, Tony spills. Phil Coulson.

“Can you tell him thank you for me? For keeping me alive this long, especially when I was younger and sick all the time… or can he hear me now? Uh, thanks?” Steve voices, scanning the ceiling.

“At least someone knows to be grateful,” Tony snips as he glares at Bucky.  

A few more shenanigns that I’ve forgotten, but eventually - even though Tony shouldn’t be doing this - he manages to wrangle his charges together. Bucky meets Clint, who has a much more dramatic life story than Bucky does. Clearly Clint needed Tony to save his ass every other week (Bucky isn’t jealous, not really, but it would be nice to have at least one or two cool stories…), so it worked out that Bucky was, overall, fairly low-maintenance. Natasha arrives not far behind, and then Thor, and then Bruce - who Tony only more recently acquired after kicking his last guardian off case because they were  _terrible_  at paying attention.

Coulson hovers, of course, and it’s more like he and Tony tag-team their guardian duties to watch over this group - which is good because wow it is sometimes a two-person job.

Bucky’s life is fuller, now. There’s a bit more drama than before (mostly Clint, but sometimes Natasha stirring up trouble), which he’s not exactly thankful for (at least not the police sirens), but… this is good.  _Better_. He’s happier, and really the only thing he’s wants now is for Tony (and Coulson) to hang out more often. He wishes that they could sit, talk, bump shoulders, share a pizza, watch a movie, go for a walk… be with them in a way they can’t, now.

Tony tries. Whether because it’s what Bucky wants (and Bucky likes to pretend he’s the favorite) or because Tony really, really wishes he could join them too - Bucky’s sure it’s the second one - Tony uses his energy more and more to pop in, corporeal form, and hang out with them. So much so that Bucky starts to get worried, but he hasn’t figured out a way to talk to Coulson alone about it without Tony overhearing.

Finally, Tony overreaches. He’s used up too much energy, and he either needs to give up his occupation as a guardian angel and return to heaven for a few decades to recuperate - or lose his wings and fall to Earth. And Tony - Tony loves the glimpses of the future, manipulating events to try to keep his charges safe, directing the world in a positive direction. He loves being a guardian and he’s damn good at it, with keeping Clint alive a testament to his skills. But Tony cares, cares too much. He can’t leave Earth, these humans, this world and let it go on without him for years and years while he’s too high to watch, to help. He doesn’t want to leave this group that he and Coulson have herded together, and he wants… he wants to touch and taste and feel this world that he’s been guarding for so long he’s forgotten what it is to truly be a part of it.

Tony falls, chooses to fall. He makes the decision alone - none of the ‘Avengers’ even know where Tony has gone, when he suddenly disappeared mid-snark - with only Coulson watching, patiently, ever observing. Still, falling is a punishment not a reward. Tony falls half-way across the world, into the desert, no where near his group and worse - he doesn’t remember them. Can’t, his memory of being a guardian angel, of heaven, wiped clean when he fell.

Coulson side-steps the warnings from on-high and urges Bucky to travel. Partially a self-discovery journey (Bucky’s birthday passing, his mid-life crisis rearing its head again and he wonders if his life is  _enough_ , is he happy  _enough_ ) and partially trying to get over a broken heart with Tony’s disappearance, Bucky wanders but with this strange urge (Coulson: “Go, just go. How did Tony ever get him to do anything? Go!”) to go to the Middle East.

He finds Tony, finally - who has been taken in by Yinsen, kind enough to help out this amnesic man who wandered into his backyard. Bucky has no other story to tell but the truth - that Tony is a guardian angel, was  _Bucky’s_  guardian angel, who disappeared and apparently lost his wings? - because Bucky can’t leave without Tony. He can’t. Even though Bucky doesn’t understand what Tony is doing here, fully human… he has to get Tony to come back with them.

The story is crazy. Tony doesn’t believe him, even Bucky doesn’t believe it entirely himself anymore. Maybe he spent too long in the sun and now he’s delusional? Yinsen is the only calm one, and whether he believes Bucky or not he urges Tony to take a chance and go with him.

Tony goes - whether because he wants too or he feels guilty taking too much an advantage of Yinsen - he still goes with Bucky. Back to New York, back to the group… back to Coulson. (and Coulson will come under fire for this, he may lose his charges but… he uses his powers to open Tony’s eyes, just a little, so that he remembers a little. Not everything, but enough to stay and get to know everyone all over again).

And… happy ever after, Avengers-shenanigans! Coulson loses some of his power, as punishment, (or so it says on paper) but still watches over his charges. And Bucky’s life is ever much more dramatic, now that Tony is there in the flesh to cause all the trouble he was missing. 

If only Bucky could get Steve to stop teasing him about causing all of this…


End file.
